Learning and teaching
Our approach to decolonisation
How we are working to move towards decolonisation at York St John.
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York St John has expressed commitment to decolonisation and anti-racism, and staff and students are working collectively towards understanding what this means for our University and wider community.
This work is necessarily difficult and discomforting: among other challenges, it demands a continual process of reflection upon our own values, assumptions and various forms of complicity with structural and systemic oppression, along with an ongoing commitment to learn, act and be otherwise.
It requires us to develop approaches to scholarship, curricula and pedagogy in which European perspectives are decentred and imperial logics unlearned, so that myriad forms of knowledge can be valued and explored – not in ways that aim to be extractivist or for the mere sake of diversification, but as a means of developing a fuller and more just account of the world and its history.
For many York St John colleagues and students, ‘decolonising the university’ must also mean investigating our institution's own historical links with colonialism and related endeavours (see McCarthy 2021), whilst interrogating the wider political contexts and systemic crises in which we are operating today.
An ongoing challenge is to try to articulate precisely what we mean by ‘decolonisation’ in our context and in this specific world-historical moment – not only to guard against its co-option, but also to ensure our local and individual actions continue to correspond with the movement’s broader principles and evolving collective demands.
Harnessing Priyamvada Gopal's 'critical and radical spirit of enquiry' (2021, 889), part of this work has included developing an initial set of questions and prompts from which to begin or continue thinking about decolonisation in relation to our respective areas of research or practice. We see this ongoing questioning process as integral to our approach at York St John, and a critical step towards more meaningful forms of decolonisation within (and beyond) our university context.
Current and ongoing activities
Running since 2023/24, the Discussing Decolonisation event series at York St John seeks to build momentum and capacity for this work by providing regular opportunities for learning and thinking about colonial histories and continuities in the context of higher education. The events range from guest lectures and presentations to interactive workshops and panel discussions, with a mixture of online, face-to-face and hybrid formats to enable various modes of participation.
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Complementing the series, our internal Discussing Decolonisation Reading Group then brings colleagues together in between events to (re)examine the key texts, concepts, debates and thinkers who have laid the groundwork for decolonisation through their critical analyses of capitalism, colonialism and various forms of resistance.
Get in touch
If you would like to learn more about this work or how you can get involved, please contact Lucy Potter (l.potter@yorksj.ac.uk) and/or Laura Key (l.key@yorksj.ac.uk), or follow the links above to find out more.
References
Gopal, P. (2021) 'Decolonisation and the University', Textual Practice, 35(6), 873-899.
McCarthy, A. (2021) 'Decolonising York St John University: An exploration of alumni colonial missionary work across three colonies from 1913 to 1928'. Unpublished conference paper.
